Really, e tu?

Blogs are funny things. I wrestle with the whole world of social media. I like to say, “Oh, if it weren’t for my business, I’d get off social media entirely, but I need to have that personal account to link to…” It’s a land of selfies, a certain vein of narcissism and the like. I could blame it on the millennials, they seem like a good group to blame these days. The problem is that I interact with a fair number of those folks and darn it, they are courteous, polite and appreciative to me. And hey, when I post something on Facebook and receive a nice comment or a thumbs up it makes me feel good. I’ve always been a “words of affirmation” type.

Over the past 25 years I’ve written a lot of things down on actual paper and virtual paper. I’ve had very nice comments from people that take the time to read some of those thoughts. A lot of what I pen is reflective. Much of what has been written will never be seen until someone digs through my journals after I’m finding a place six feet under. Then people can finally see what I’m all about!

A year ago my 83 year old mother was in town visiting. I loaded backpacking photos of trips onto a flash drive, inserted it into the television and took my mom on a virtual trip of Colorado and Utah. She loved it! Before she went home I printed off a blog of my 10 day hike of the Colorado Trail from 2015. Over the past year she has commented on how much she enjoys reading the account. “You’re really quite a good writer.” For the first time in my life, hearing this from my mom, I believe it. Maybe people really do enjoy reading this folly. My mom is a pretty good writer as well. She has written endless letters to the editor of our local paper, short stories and then self-published a book about her love affair with my father. She and I both have something in common with writing. Neither of us took formal education on creative writing. She is an avid reader. I’d like to become an avid reader, reading when I can make myself sit still.

After years of resistance and likely fear of people saying “Your stuff isn’t really that good, why would you devote a dedicated site to it?”, I’m risking failure, (my theme of late), and putting it out there for the cruel cyber world to discover.

The initial theme will be around a 52 week writing project. Each week in 2017 I will go sit somewhere outside. I’ll note the coordinates once I find the spot of the week, sit and observe what happens in that hour. I’ll pay attention to my physical body, my wandering mind, my spirit and the things that are around me. It may be in an urban setting, or a mountain, or a park. If I’m traveling, it all still works, and I like that.

So come along and see the world via My World Standing Still. It will be largely organic in terms of virtual visualness. It will certainly evolve throughout the year. I’m not limiting the parameters except there will be one photo each week that best represents what I felt. If you’d like to follow along you can subscribe and get nifty reminders that I posted something new. You can also comment and I’m really open to positive, negative or neutral comments. If you promise not to curse I’ll leave it up there for the other critics to see.